first published in 1835, gives minute details of an execution in which it was employed at Genoa in 1507; and it is elaborately described by Pere Jean Baptiste Labat in his _Voyage en Espagne et en Italie en 1730_. It is mentioned by Jacques, viscomte de Puysegur, in his _Memoires_ as in use in the south of France, and he describes the execution by it of Marshal Montmorency at Toulouse in 1632. For about a century it had, however, fallen into general disuse on the continent; and Dr Guillotine, who first suggested its use in modern times, is said to have obtained his information regarding it from the description of an execution that took place at Milan in 1702, contained in an anonymous work entitled _Voyage historique et politique de Suisse, d'Italie, et d'Allemagne_. Guillotine, who was born at Saintes, May 28, 1738, and elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1789, brought forward on the 1st December of that year two propositions regarding capital punishment, the second of which was that, "in all cases of capital punishment it shall be of the same kind--that is, decapitation--and it shall be executed by means of a machine." The reasons urged in support of this proposition were that in cases of capital punishment the privilege of execution by decapitation should no longer be confined to the nobles, and that it was desirable to render the process of execution as swift and painless as possible. The debate was brought to a sudden termination in peals of laughter caused by an indiscreet reference of Dr Guillotine to his machine, but his ideas seem gradually to have leavened the minds of the Assembly, and after various debates decapitation was adopted as the method of execution in the penal code which became law on the 6th October 1791. At first it was intended that decapitation should be by the sword, but on account of a memorandum by M. Sanson, the executioner, pointing out the expense and certain other inconveniences attending that method, the Assembly referred the question to a committee, at whose request Dr Antoine Louis, secretary to the Academy of Surgeons, prepared a memorandum on the subject. Without mentioning the name of Guillotine, it recommended the adoption of an instrument similar to that which was formerly suggested by him. The Assembly decided in favour of the report, and the contract was offered to the person who usually provided the instruments of justice; but, as his terms were considered exorbitant, an agreement was ultimately come to with a German of the name of Schmidt, who, under the direction of M. Louis, furnished a machine for each of the French departments. After satisfactory experiments had been made with the machine on several dead bodies in the hospital of Bicetre, it was erected on the Place de Greve for the execution of the highwayman Pelletier on the 25th April 1792. While the experiments regarding the machine were being carried on, it received the name _Louisette_ or _La